Also who cares about spelling ? Many do, but I sure don’t. I would consider producing spelling Bee winners to be a very clear sign of misplaced priorities.

The claim then becomes that more US citizens self identify as Democrats than as Republicans, their views on policy are to the right of X. I am quite sure that this is not true—on tax progressivity, the minimum wage, universal health insurance, environmental protection, the war in Iraq, should government do more, and does the government have a responsibility to take care of people most citizens are to the left of X. On the death penalty (if you assume that Democrats who claim to support it are lying) and AFDC (if you remember what it was and who was President when it became TANF), due process rights and overwhelmingly creationism vs natural selection most US citizens are to the right of X. In other words, if the Democrats abandone decades old policy positions, they might end up too far left for the median voter.

By my definition the USA was a center left country from at the latest 1996 through the present except maybe for a year or two after 9/11. However, I thought, with great effort and in a spirit of bipartisanship, I can interpret Republicans claims so they are meaningful albeit false.

Then I read this
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/20/boehner-center-right/

BOEHNER: … I think the Congress is still a center-right Congress.

OK back to the drawing board.

Many good responses to this so far – I would also add that home school teachers do not have to accept in to their “classroom” any and all who arrive at their door. No matter how serious the social problems, the mental health issues, the personality problems the home school student brings to the classroom, the teacher is faced only with a very small number of students, any of which can be expelled (sent to public schools) at moment’s notice. Private schools have the same advantage. It makes quite a difference.

“Why is it that home schoolers win most of the spelling bees while $14,000.00/yr/pupil worth of tax dollars spent on students from the D.C. public schools never seems to produce any winners?”

I went through the DC public schools system, and I think I’ve done okay according to the standards any school system might set for its alumni: post-graduate degrees in law and engineering from top-5 national programs, etc. Several of my friends from high school are similarly situated.

Let me guess: you live in the DC suburbs, right? Fairfax? Potomac? And you commute into the city every day and leech off the services and infrastructure paid for by taxes on DC residents, right? Must be nice to have a subject population just over the District line who subsidize your lifestyle but don’t have a vote in the Congress that controls their budget and their taxation.

Or are you one of the carpetbaggers who’ve moved into the city in the past ten years now that it’s white “safe” enough to do so?

I understand your point, and only an idiot would deny that the DCPS has some major probolems, but in my experience it’s a better idea to focus first on the outright theft of resources in a system before turning to other sources of inefficiency. But of course, outlets like the Washington Post like to beat the “irresponsible black people who can’t manage their own schools” drum to distract everyone from the suburbanites looting the city’s coffers in broad daylight.

“The GOP comes to mind…..”

Sadly, ruefully, I must admit worse things could to happen to the GOP in it’s present form.
As the old saying goes: “They said, ‘cheer up, things could be worse’ and so I did, and sure enough, they got worse….”

The GOP comes to mind….

I don’t remember the french sociologist, but CN Parkinson wrote a long essay on the topic.

As one who is mildly dyslexic and whose son is severely so afflicted, I hear you. As far as the well to do resisting giving money to poor people is concerned, that’s EXACTLY why the SS system was disguised as a retirement system for middle class people. As FDR is said to have stated: “Any program exclusively for poor people will forever remain a ‘poor’ program,”

I was just stirring the pot somewhat. As a beneficiary of public education whose Mother taught for 26 yrs at the elementary level and her sister 32; and having grown up on a teachers college campus with a professor Father I am hardly one to say that public education is worthless or that money (i.e., good facilities, of which campus Lab schools have aplenty) doesn’t make a difference. Having said that however, one has to admit
that endemic big city corruption (here in New Orleans they recently found 32 million! had been siphoned off in payroll to deceased people scams. etc.) and student discipline and teacher competency problems seem politically insurmountable. Improvements to this where they have been tried anywhere in the nation seem to achieve results that are marginal at best and at great cost.

You know there is a school of thought in administrative and bureaucratic decision-making theory advanced by a French sociologist whose name escapes me now that some organizations are so far gone that any improvements only make them more “efficiently ineffective,” and that the best thing is to blow them up and begin anew. I sometimes think that is true in the case of public schools —inner city ones anyway—the guy just may be right.

I might also make the provocative statement that the problem is mainly one of Democrat
control. The last sixty years have seen the school boards and City Hall of every major city east of the Mississippi controlled by a solid line of Democrats—the first thirty white ones, the second thirty black ones. Perhaps it’s time to try a different sort of people.

You want real change? You have to give outsiders a fighting chance.

I don’t think this is true. First, there is such a thing as moral reform—someone could be a Nazi for a long time, then see the light and become an anti-Nazi crusader. I don’t think we should ignore the things he says because of his Nazi past. Second, there are areas where someone discredits himself in that area, but not in others. William Shockley discredited himself in race studies but not in chemistry. And even if you discredit yourself in one part of social science it doesn’t follow that you’re not to be listened to in any of your other pontifications about social science.

I’m unclear on what you think this proves. First, homeschoolers can dedicate as much or as little time to a certain topic as they like. Some parents dedicate an awful lot of time to rote memorization of spelling in order to have their children do well in spelling bees. Without some measure of their overall knowledge or skills, this is meaningless. Second, by citing the “$14,000/yr/pupil” figure you seem to be claiming that homeschooling produces these results at a fraction of the cost. If, however, one considers the opportunity cost of homeschooling, I doubt that it is substantially cheaper.

And as someone who is dislexic and thanks the great magnet for spell check – I find who ever wins spelling bees to be at best a test of long term memory – as an example – shakespear couldn’t spell worth a damn.